n.a computer application developed in the 1960s and 1970s at the Library of Congress to assist in the production and indexing of finding aids for records and manuscript collectionsHickerson 1981, 29The basic SPINDEX II programs provide for the printing of a register (a formatted, narrative collection description or abstract) and an index. The index provides for a primary sort of keywords, alphabetically or chronologically, and a secondary sort by either title or date. . . . However, after the staff of the NHPRC decided to use SPINDEX in the creation of a national data base of information on archives and manuscripts in the United States, they requested that NARS make significant changes in the SPINDEX II software package. Carrying out these modifications resulted in the creation of SPINDEX III.Barth 1997The Library of Congress (LC) acquired its first computer in 1964, which encouraged the archival staff to begin to explore new ways to use the emerging technology to facilitate access. Many limitations existed in the card-based systems already underway . . . As a result, LC developed two separate systems, the Master Record of Manuscript Collections (MRMC) to provide administrative control over holdings, and SPINDEX (emerging out of the previous punch card project) to provide automated forms of access to archival materials. The National Archives joined the automation effort in 1967, and developed a derivative system from SPINDEX geared more specifically for archival collections at NARA called SPINDEX II. ¶ SPINDEX II focused on providing access to archival collections by automating previously prepared and published finding aids. . . . ¶ The National Archives used SPINDEX II extensively throughout the 1970s, producing among other guides, the first comprehensive index to the Papers of the Continental Congress in conjunction with the American Bicentennial. NARA also used the system to prepare up-to-date collection guides (subject-based, and format-based) as well as the National Historical Publications and Records Commission’s Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories. NARA did make the SPINDEX II system available to other organizations, and the system was used widely both as an archival control program, but also in a records management capacity for many corporations in the United States, Canada, and Australia.Gilliland 2014a, 92By the late 1960s and 1970s, several large archival institutions were implementing home-grown mainframe database systems that allowed for the creation and compilation of computerized finding aids. . . . Most prominently among these mainframe systems were NARS A-1, developed by the National Archives, and SPINDEX, developed in 1964 by the Library of Congress and based on a prior punch-card project. It was used in conjunction with its Master Record of Manuscript Collections (MRMC) for administrative and intellectual control over manuscript holdings. In 1967, the National Archives developed SPINDEX II, more tailored to the descriptive needs of records. In addition to generating finding aids for accumulations of records, SPINDEX II could be used for records management applications. The National Archives also employed SPINDEX II to create the first edition of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission’s Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories. The archives subsequently created a modified version, SPINDEX III, to support the development of a national database of information on archives and manuscripts in the United States.Wiedeman 2019a, 389Influenced by earlier specialized manuscripts access projects such as the Library of Congress Presidential Papers indexing, the National Archives led a consortial effort funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to develop SPINDEX II (or Selective Permutation Indexing), an adaption of computational methods like IBM’s KWIC indexing to finding aids.Wiedeman 2019a, 391SPINDEX II, which made hopeful appearances in many early 1970s publications and was featured prominently on the cover of the 1972 Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting program, was mostly absent from the archival literature by the late 1970s. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) did use a modified SPINDEX system for the 1978 Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the United States, but even by the late 1970s, the National Information Systems Task Force (NISTF) would reject SPINDEX as the basis for a descriptive national standard.
Notes
SPINDEX is derived from Selective Permutation Indexing. There were three iterations of the system, referred to as SPINDEX, SPINDEX II, and SPINDEX III.
